ABSTRACT
Introduction Whereas much criminology is focused on offenders and the ways in which the state responds to offenders, the various approaches covered in this chapter are more immediately concerned with ‘criminal events’ and the circumstances in which those events occur. Such approaches have enjoyed growing popularity since the 1970s. This, Garland (2000) argues, represents a fairly marked break with the criminological orthodoxy that held sway for most of the twentieth century. The reason for their emergence, and their popularity, lies in the growth in the same period of the sense that ‘nothing works’. Previously, great faith had been invested in the expectation that increasing prosperity and improving living conditions would lead to declining crime rates and, also, that where crimes were committed, ameliorative interventions would be found which could be used successfully to rehabilitate those who contravened the law.
